A UNI Hub is a consortium of universities that agree to work on the same thematic priority under the principles of mutual collaboration, exchange and learning, producing outputs which strengthen the role of universities in forwarding sustainable urban development.

The new UNI action plan implements easier communication and sharing of materials within the Thematic Hub collaborations. See Thematic Hub pages for collaborations between universities interested in similar themes. Interested parties can now share materials simply by posting Tweets with the relevant Hub hashtag.

The Hubs established under the umbrella of UNI are to link the ongoing related work of UN-Habitat to the work the Hub does on the subject. Through active collaborations UN-Habitat and these academic consortia are to forward research and action on the thematic target, promoting education, policy advice and professional development which are updated to current urban realities, and which have a strong focus on translating into direct impacts on the city level.

UN-Habitat’s most viewed videos – UNI’s Global Urban Lectures – just reached 88,000 views. The application process has now become open to the public. Submit your application here.

The Global Urban Lectures were launched in April 2014 as part of UNI’s mission to support the exchange of ideas between urban professionals, academics and experts worldwide.

The series is comprised of lecture packages including a 15 min video, synopsis of the topic, biography of the speaker and links to in depth study.

The lecturers are associated with UN-Habitat, universities, think-tanks, governments, NGOs, and private sector institutions. The series aims to demonstrate a sound evidence-based analysis of a given problem and issues at stake, identify propositions to address them and provide examples that demonstrate how such propositions actually work, are being tested or have been implemented.

All lecture packages are available online, free of charge: Global Urban Lectures

The UNI Portal contains information about each university partner and contacts for the partnership, and has now been updated with information about the specific collaborations within UNI for each partnership, as well as a feed of internal news from the partner.

An updated approach to sharing the news from all university partners (200+). Visitors to the uni.unhabitat.org can now see a continuously updated feed of combined news from all universities in the partnership, as generated by the partners themselves.

Any partner, individual or institutional, can now share their thesis, article, book, publication, news story, event or other material in the UNI shared library, simply by adding #UNIsharedlibrary to their Tweet of the material.

Each Thematic Hub now has its own discussion forum, and under the ‘Discussion‘ section UNI is featuring special discussion forums on particular topics.

UNI is in its updated Opportunities section gathering internships, vacancies and competitions within the UN agencies.

Joining over 200 universities within the Partnership, UNI gathers knowledge and statistics of its partners activities in a unified format via online surveys and reports. For current surveys, see the Reporting section.